Breaking News
A Very Special Person Is Gone: Rest in Peace Barbara Curtis from MommyLife.Net
I’m very saddened to have heard this evening that Barbara Curtis, the author and editor of MommyLife.net passed away today.
Barbara was a dynamo…and a very special person. We corresponded a few times here and there through the years and my good friend Abbey has loved her site for as long as I think Barbara ran it; MommyLife.net is a great place for parenting and home tips that Barbara originated by sharing her collected wisdom from raising a large family. She’s another person who never set out to run a website, but it just sort of happened because she had a lot of things to share.
The Internet can be a truly nasty and negative place — and through the years I’ve encountered a number of despicable people who bask in the anonymity of the online world to get up to all sorts of horrors — but it’s wholly redeemed because of the truly amazing spirits out there that really contribute something of themselves to make the world a better place in their own way. I think Barbara did that, in spades. She was always so positive, so bursting with good cheer, and so delightfully practical.
I didn’t know her, aside from email, but just looking at her picture and reading her articles I felt like she’d be the kind of woman I’d have loved to have as an auntie. What a kind soul, wonderful mother, and devoted friend she clearly was. And what a wonderful thing she did with her time on this Earth!
I just want to underscore how hard it is to run a positive, life-affirming, and productive corner of the Internet. It takes a lot of work, and it’s a struggle every day to generate original content. Then there are the armchair quarterbacks who send the hatemail saying how they could do it all better…or the trolls who just love to snipe for no reason. It’s shocking the sort of nastiness you set yourself up to receive by having anything to do with a popular website…but Barbara always impressed me as one of the great editors who made it always look so easy.
She was a dear and sweet woman who will be missed.
I hope others pick up where she left off and in their own ways become little lights of positivity in the too-often dark and dank corners of the web.
Barbara was a class act and her wisdom and advice will sorely be missed.
My thoughts go out to her family and friends and her many readers whom she leaves behind.
*********************************************************
Because we’re friends like this, I will share with you something very personal to me.
Whenever anyone I know goes home to our loving God and joins the assemblage of Heaven, I like playing the theme to Terms of Endearment. Debra Winger, one of the actresses in the movie, is from Cleveland and I love how she and Shirley Maclaine fought like cats and dogs making that film. I love the character of Aurora Greenway and the way she and her daughter sparred but loved each other and how this movie always makes me cry…but always also makes me appreciate the people I care most about. Every time I watch it, I pick up the phone and call people I haven’t spoken to in a while and reconnect…because life is so precious and short.
I’m a child of the 80s and this theme imprinted on me. It has the sad parts…but then speeds up…kicks into gear…and always makes me want to do SOMETHING BIG today. Like, it inspires me to not want to miss anything or to waste a day.
It makes me think of good people I’ve known who are gone who would give anything to be here just one more day to do SOMETHING…and we all honor them by going out there and doing something good in their memory.
It’s up to you what you should do, but I think I’m going to honor the delightful and sweet Miss Barbara Curtis by nudging some undecideds and independents out there to vote for Romney/Ryan and save our country. I think Miss Barbara would have liked that.
FEAR PORN WATCH: Keeping tabs of conservative writers who will claim “The Hurricane Has Saved Obama!”
Last month, I was mocked by the anonymous (and titular) author of the website Ace of Spades for being a “Morale Director” when I called him out on screwing with his readers’ emotions by churning out either depressing Eeyore-breeding columns saying that “we’re doomed!” or by flashing panicked “fear porn” pieces across his site declaring one bizarre conspiracy or another to magically win the election for Barack Obama. All of this is nonsense, and while I think Ace is a very talented comic most days, I had to reprimand him again on Friday for engaging in fear porn. Ace then took the weekend off and still isn’t writing again today, presumably because he’s having Internet problems due to Hurricane Sandy. We’ll just have to take his word on that one and not speculate that he’s really still sulking because a gay guy called him a big sissy and admonished him for peddling fear porn.
I’m really happy he’s not at his usual post, to be honest, because I’d expect him to be leading a new fear porn explosion centered around the bizarre meme that “Hurricane Sandy’s going to save Obama!”. I’m keeping a close watch on Allahpundit at HotAir.com, Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal, David Frum at The Daily Beast, and Ben Shapiro at Breitbart.com because this is the sort of apocryphal fearfest these people enjoy promoting (for fun and profit). Before I debunk the panicked “Sandy saves Obama!” meme before it even begins I want to remind you that conservative sites boost their web traffic and thus generate higher ad fees by whipping Republican readers into panics (for no good reason). I personally believe that Allahpundit at HotAir is specifically employed by TownHall magazine as a writer on that site to churn out fear porn…because these are the only articles that Leftist sites will link to at HotAir and Allahpundit’s the only writer on that site that gets picked up by the Ministry of Truth at large (since they enjoy using his articles to show their own viewers and readers that “See! Romney’s really losing! This anonymous conservative writer says so too!”).
Fear porn is BIG MONEY for conservative sites…and that’s why their writers deliberately choose to toy with their readers’ emotions. Think about the local news where you live. Do you know how they constantly claim every coming snowstorm will be “the storm of the century!” or how they frantically tell people to rush home from work to watch the evening news for a “blizzard of the decade update!”. THAT is fear porn on a local level, and it’s been in vogue since the 1980s in the local news market because too many broadcasts soaked up too few eyeballs..and so stations had to find gimmicks to force locals to watch THEIR evening news over the competitors’. For those who don’t know this, the bulk of a local tee-vee station’s ad revenue comes from the sale of commercials during the news broadcasts…and the easiest way to draw viewers has been to panic people over the weather. This is why so many people don’t evacuate during a hurricane like Sandy…because they think, “Oh, it won’t be that bad…they’re just exaggerating for ratings again”.
AceofSpades, HotAir, and (sadly) now Breitbart all need ad revenue to pay their staffs. They are not volunteer efforts. So, their business models call for having someone there who fills the fear mongering role that’s played in local tee-vee markets by weatherologists (the term I give these clowns who present fear porn as actual weather reports instead of the professional meteorologists who apparently don’t exist anymore). Fear porn = increased traffic = bigger ad sales = bonuses for the writers on staff. Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money!
The more panicked these writers get readers, the more people want to keep clicking back to the site to see if they still need to be afraid or if maybe things have calmed down. Also, a lot of chicken littles out there enjoy seeing a shocking and terrifying new post written by Ace, Allahpundit, or Ben Shapiro…and when the fear hits the fan at these sites, some reactionary and terror-prone people race to spread the fear porn to others in their social networks via Twitter, Facebook, email, smoke signal, whatever. ”Did you see what Ben Shapiro’s said now! They wouldn’t let him write that if it wasn’t true!”. Well, actually, ANDREW BREITBART wouldn’t have allowed that little pup to get away with the fear mongering he engages in…but whoever’s counting the ad sales at Breitbart since Andrew died seems to have no problem with young Ben scaring the bejeebus out of people on a regular basis just because he can. The kid’s adorable…he looks like one of the twin brothers from The Hogan Family…I’m sure he’s very nice…but he desperately needs someone like Andrew to tell him to knock it the Hell off with the fear porn.
Folks, you need to understand that political reporting is a business for 99% of the people out there…and staying in business means pushing traffic higher and scoring more ad money. So every day, most sites have some terror-inducing piece up that was typed with frost-fingered fear…and this is just a gimmick to draw controversy and eyeballs to that site, as opposed to people reading something else that day. The scarier and more apocalyptic the better…with no concern at all for it being completely apocryphal. Welcome to the business of political writing.
Case in point: the fear porn du jour seems to be that “Hurricane Sandy has saved Obama and he’ll win the election now!”. This is what Ace will no doubt tell you when he’s back from whatever the heck he’s doing right now (licking his wounds?)…and I’m sure Allahpundit and Ben Shapiro will chime in on this meme too. Let’s play a game and see how long it takes them to do it. Please know that I am watching and counting and keeping track of all the fear mongering these guys do in the lead up to November 6th and will be demanding professional consequences for all of them for needlessly freaking Romney voters out every few days just to score web traffic for their sites.
Let’s take a realistic look at exactly how Hurricane Sandy impacts the election:
* THE ELECTION WILL NOT BE POSTPONED OR SUSPENDED BECAUSE OF A STORM. No election in American history has been postponed…not during WWII, not because of anything happening in the Cold War, not during previous big storms. American elections are held in the middle of hurricane season and happen every four years (for president) and every two years (midterms) the first Tuesday of November. Like clockwork. There is no chance in an exasperated Heaven or a conniving Hell that this election is being postponed or suspended. There is plenty of time for people to get to the polls and vote on November 6th and there is no way for any state to extend voting after November 6th because all states must vote on the same day for President. That’s the law, and it would take an act of Congress to change that…and this is not going to happen, folks. If you read anyone claiming the election will be altered because of a storm you need to call that person a fear-pornographer.
* Romney voters are “broken glass” voters and will not be impeded from voting due to a storm; Obama voters are largely unmotivated and may actually stay home if the storm damage is too much by November 6th. I actually think if anyone sits home on election day it will be Obama voters who use the storm as an excuse, claiming it was too hard to get to their polling places to vote…or they were too busy cleaning up storm damage to vote. None of this is true, mind you, but people love making excuses for being lazy or not doing something that others think they should do. My boyfriend Justin does this ALL THE TIME and will use any excuse out there to get out of doing something he knows he’s supposed to do. If it drizzles a little, Justin declares the roads are bad so he won’t have to do something I asked him to do that requires driving…but magically, after it’s too late to do that thing, Justin thinks it’s perfectly fine to drive to the store for beer if he wants it a few hours later. Classic. Do not believe the fear porn peddlers: if anyone loses votes as a result of Hurricane Sandy, it will be Obama because the storm just gave millions of disenchanted Obama supporters an excuse for not bothering to vote.
* There is no rally-around-the-flag effect with a Northeastern hurricane. This is a big fear porn meme today…that “Obama looks presidential because of the hurricane!!!!!!!!!”. The people who subscribe to this add way more exclamation points than I put there, but you get the idea. Barack Obama has had four years to look presidential and has failed consistently. A hurricane is not going to remedy this for him. Yes, he gets to go and survey damage…but visually that amounts to Barack Obama walking amongst ruins. This does not make him look presidential…but instead depicts him as a man surrounded by the ruin he’s made of this country in the last four years. This is not going to help him, but is instead going to reinforce the image people have of him of a president who stood by and allowed this country to go to seed since the 2008 election. Standing in a burned out building or being photographed in front of a pile of destroyed cars just underscores the fact that all the “Hopeychange” we were promised four years ago left us in ruin and debt that will take a long time to dig out from.
* Disaster relief will be mismanaged and people will not have power for a week or more…and folks will get angry. I have to let you in on a secret about the New York/New Jersey area that the Ministry of Truth does not like to talk about, but the people who work in the union-controlled public services in these states are incompetent at best and deliberately lazy at worst. I have many good friends in New York City who observed this willful sloth and general union mentality when the big blizzard hit the city last year. The unions purposefully moved slowly to restore life to the city because they wanted to use the storm to extract concessions to their contracts. Also, the unions mandate that these workers be allowed to move at a snail’s pace, with many lunch breaks, and that no one can ever make them hustle. Not even the Mayor. Certainly not the President. The unions are not going to suddenly be able to make guys who have been trained for decades to take their time and move slowly suddenly do their jobs efficiently just because Democrats need to be reelected. This is not reality. Oh, Democrats will put pressure on the union bosses to make the work happen quickly. And the union bosses with squabble a little over that and demand concessions from Democrats…and then they’ll TRY to get their guys working faster…but the union boots on the ground will continue work at their usual snail’s pace because this is what union guys DO. The only way they’ll work faster is if they are directly affected by the damage…as in, they will clear their own street and repair their own power first…and then they will do their buddies’…and then sometime next week they will get around to you. Meanwhile, people will go without power and will be angry about it in no time flat. Angry people who still see a big mess and are wandering around in the dark by November 6th aren’t going to be singing Barack Obama’s praises. The Catch-22 for the current President on this is that even if things WERE restored fully to normal in just a day or two, people would still be angry because they were inconvenienced at all. It’s really hard for any politician to win with the general public when it comes to any disruption in their lives. People hold grudges for all sorts of things…and a tree that’s down and blocking their street for even a day is a tree that costs Democrats a lot of votes if Democrats are in power in that state. ”It took them a whole day to get rid of it and I had to find somewhere else to park and then my shoes got wet!”, I can easily hear these sorts of people crying. ”Screw them if they think I’m going all the way down to vote for these people!”.
* It looks like Romney has a better chance than ever of winning Pennsylvania now. I still think Pennsylvania is the Zac Efron of states (a perpetual tease who always seems on the verge of joining our team, but then retreats back into its media-approved closet again) and find it hard to believe it will actually vote Republican (no matter how much I want it to)…but if Philly has received any major storm damage in typical Democrat-voting areas then Democrats are not going to vote in as big of numbers as they would have if there had been no storm. As noted above, Republicans are “broken glass” voters in this election — meaning they would crawl miles over broken glass to vote for Mitt Romney. For Obama? Not so much with the broken-glass crawling for Democrats. And a hurricane leaves a lot of broken glass and down trees in its wake. It honestly is impossible for anyone to know how Pennsylvania will vote this year, but the only thing keeping it in Obama’s column is Philadelphia and its suburbs. It really is a nail biter to see who wins this state. I’m someone who is never afraid of going out on a limb and telling you exactly what I think…and I have to say that it’s a 50/50 coin toss this year how Pennsylvania goes. That means it is THE BEST CHANCE EVER for Republicans to win this state…and I actually think that Hurricane Sandy has helped, in a weird way.
Just watch. Democrats will not be able to respond well to this storm and clear away all the damage by Election Day, because Democrats have not been good at doing anything for the last four years. These people are not suddenly going to decide to be competent TODAY. That’s absurd. Barack Obama is not suddenly going to be sober and drug-free and able to lead effectively. Sheer force of will and political necessity cannot magically make someone not a junkie or give him abilities he’s never manifested in the last four years. That’s insanity to think that.
New York City in particular keeps proving that the unions that control its public services are grossly incompetent and incredibly lazy…and they are not going to magically change that just because Barack Obama now needs them too. It is just not going to happen. This will not happen in any other Democrat-controlled area that is affected by the storms…but I bet that Republican leaders will get their communities cleaned up and there will be a stark contrast between THAT response to the storm and what the Democrats muster in the urban centers they control.
Trust me, that is not a comparison that Democrats want right now.
If you are someone who is prone to falling into fear porn traps I really want to ask you to be more responsible right now. Fear is addictive, I know, and it’s fun for some of you to scare all your friends and family by passing fear porn on to them. Scaring people is a joy many have had since they were in grade school…especially around HALLOWEEN. But, really, please be more mature than to engage in fear porn mongering.
I know it will be tempting because a LOT of conservative sites will be claiming that “Hurricane Sandy just won the election for Obama!” but PLEASE remember the motivations of the writers on these sites. They are looking for big web traffic in the lead up to the election. They want high ad revenue…so they will FREAK YOU OUT and play you like a harp from Hell because they are counting on taking advantage of your fears to drive up their numbers. Don’t fall for this.
You are so much smarter than that and we wouldn’t be friends like this otherwise.
Obama Don’t Like White People
[ "I never thought this is how 'Hope and Change' would turn out!" -- two white people must be thinking, if they follow the logic established by the Ministry of Truth in 2005 that the color of a president's skin and how he feels about people with different skin colors is directly related to the amount of damage a hurricane causes when it sweeps through a major city with destructive fury. ]
There’s a great email circulating today that originated with Reverend Wayne Perryman, an author and black community activist in Mercer Island, Washington. A good friend of mine is on his email list and passed his message on to me this morning:
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
Because levees in the northeast have broken and caused flooding; because in New Jersey people are stuck in the second floor of their homes and are on top of their mobile homes waiting to be rescued; and because several homes have been burned; and because tunnels are flooded, roads and bridges are closed and Obama just declared these areas disaster areas even though he knew this storm was on its way a week in advance, this proves that ”Obama don’t like white people.”
“Bush Don’t Like Black People” - Isn’t this what they said about Bush when Katrina caused similar problems? Will movie stars, entertainers and CNN hold a telethon to raise money for the victims of Sandy?
Like my mother used to say: What goes around come around – or-
Be careful of the words you say
keep them soft and sweet
You’ll never know from day to day
Which ones you’ll have to eat
Rev. Wayne Perryman
The reverend is referring to how the Ministry of Truth that is our national media declared George W. Bush to be racist because he was a sitting white President in office at the time that a massive hurricane swept through a largely black city and caused extensive flooding, property damage and loss of life. The fact that Hurricane Katrina damaged New Orleans was proof to the Left that George W. Bush was a racist back in 2005.
Well, here in 2012, a massive hurricane swept through a largely white city and caused extensive flooding, property damage and loss of life…with a sitting black President in office at the time. Clearly, by the standards and logic established by the Ministry of Truth this is conclusive proof that Barack Obama is a virulent racist. I already knew that, but it’s nice to see there’s proof.
As Reverend Wayne Perryman attest, “Obama don’t like white people”.
13 Year Old Jenny Gives Obama and Romney Report Cards — MUST SEE VIDEO
This is a really great ad, disguised as a school project from a 13 year old girl named “Jenny” who hands out report cards to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for the accomplishments in their lives. Obama’s report card from Jenny looks like the ones he earned at Occidental and in Columbia and Harvard. Romney scores straight As for competence and delivering on this promises.
If you want to believe that Jenny is a real person and she truly made this “school project” on her own, then don’t click below because saying any more would be like telling someone Santa isn’t real.
Read the rest of this entry »
Shark Spotted Swimming On Flooded Jersey Highway?
UPDATE: Turns out this is an old photo that makes the rounds during hurricanes where there is flooding…and the emails are just updated claiming it was in the path of fill-in-the-blank storm. This time it was Sandy. Last time it was Irene. And it becomes a thing via email that people pass onto one another.
There are apparently a TON of these faked Hurricane Sandy images circulating online. Have you fallen for any of them?
***************
Original Post:
This is making the rounds in email (I don’t know the source so if you do, please give credit to the photographer). UPDATE: It’s a photoshop.
Someone driving an SUV on a flooded Jersey highway supposedly spotted a large shark swimming by in the storm surge…the shark was swimming over what until yesterday was a dry surface road, made somewhat Atlantean by Hurricane Sandy. If you get this in email today, don’t be surprised.
This reminds me a lot of the recent Australian horror movie Bait, about a tsunami that struck a small Aussie beach town and flooded an underground supermarket with a pair of great whites.
It’s worth your time, actually, if you are looking for a fun Halloween movie tonight or tomorrow (not too gruesome but has some inventive scares and a storyline that’s kind of a combination of Stephen King’s The Mist and the Deep Blue Sea movie that had Samuel L. Jackson and the sharks, and not that other movie called The Deep Blue Sea that’s disappointing because it lacks sharks).
Read the rest of this entry »
Is This the Final Election Map for 2012? Romney = 301, Obama = 237? Or will it be an even higher margin of victory?
UnskewedPolls.com has done a great job of filtering through the propaganda that the Ministry of Truth has cooked into polls this election. The most recent electoral map over there shows a Romney win at 301 EVS to just 237 for Obama. That’s a 64-EV margin of victory.
I’ve always thought that Romney will win by between 70-80 EVs…and possibly over 100. So I think UnskewedPolls is a little too hesitant here.
The two big changes I’d make to their map are:
* Romney takes one EV in Maine, because Maine splits things by Congressional district and I believe Romney takes one of Maine’s 3 EVs this way.
* Romney wins New Mexico…which is going on a limb somewhat because this is a state that normally votes Democrat, but I think Governor Susana Martinez personally wins the state for Romney. She’s campaigning hard for him, is a dynamic person, and I believe the state’s fallen in love with her. I know I sure loved her speech at the Republican convention and expect big things from her in the future. I think she delivers for Romney.
* This would bring Romney’s EV total up to 307, versus Obama’s 230…for a difference of 70 EVs between them. Realistically, this is how big I think the win is going to be…barring a true cataclysm for Democrats where they lose Pennsylvania and Michigan.
I don’t think it’s possible for Obama to lose Pennsylvania and not lose Michigan too…so I think he either keeps both, or loses both. These are the only two states I see as toss-ups right now…with 36 EVs that could go to Romney in the extraordinary circumstances of this election. This is wildly new territory for Republicans to be in…and it’s pretty remarkable for observers of politics to consider a scenario where the Democrat incumbent loses Pennsylvania and Michigan. That loss would make Romney’s win in the 100 EV range…which would be remarkable.
In the last week of this election, look for any signs that Democrats are losing hold of Pennsylvania and Michigan. If they start diverting resources there, and start aggressively campaigning there, then we’ll know that these are the last two battlegrounds of this election.
The Ministry of Truth is still claiming that Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Ohio are toss-ups…but don’t believe it. Those states are in Romney’s column and have been for quite some time. Personally, I think Obama lost reelection back in 2010 the day that Obamacare passed despite the fact that Americans coast to coast didn’t want Democrats to ram that legislation through the way they did. Minitru has run cover for Obama and the Left ever since, but it’s been obvious that the aggressive way Obamacare was handled permanently alienated Independents from Democrats and unified Republicans in opposition to the Left. Remember that Obama only won his election in 2008 by tricking Independents into thinking he’d be a moderate in office…and many Republicans were so delighted to have a black president that they broke ranks and voted for him too. None of those fools will be voting Democrat again this time.
Who’s left, then? People who vote Democrat no matter who is running and people who think Obama did a good job in these last four years. That is not a majority of people in states like Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire or Ohio. Is that a majority of people in Michigan or Pennsylvania? We’ll know in a week…but I’m tempted to think, NO.
It is a majority of folks in California and New York…and it’s a majority in DC and Hawaii…but are there really enough people who vote Democrat no matter what and who think Obama’s done a good job in Michigan and Pennsylvania? Are the urban centers of Detroit and Philly strong enough to deliver their respective states to Obama?
That’s the big question we’re facing right now. I think this is where it breaks down to a 50/50 chance of Romney winning these states…and I think we might know more by November 1st, once Halloween is over and the Left starts showing more of its hand right before the election. We already know Romney’s going to win..but the guessing game is figuring out by how much…and I think in the next four or five days that the Left will tip us off to the right answer depending on how crazy they start behaving and how many resources are dumped into Michigan and Pennsylvania to hold their firewall there.
Can you even believe that the 2012 elections involve the new-battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania?
TIME TO CALL YOUR SENATORS: Demand the release of the October Jobs Report on time this Friday
The Obama Regime is attempting to use Hurricane Sandy as an excuse for the Department of Labor to postpone releasing the October Jobs Report numbers until after the November 6th election…because the numbers are bad for Obama. There is no justifiable reason to suppress this report and postpone it until after the election; Hurricane Sandy has nothing to do with the October jobs numbers and these figures have already been compiled. The report is written. It is waiting to be released. There is no excuse for postponing this just to help Obama in the election.
Time to call your Senators and demand this Jobs Report be released on time this Friday.
You actually need to file a formal request to have your Senator contact the Congressional liaison to the Department of Labor and file a formal complaint about any delay in the Jobs Report. I am letting you in on the best secret I have ever discovered about our government: that there are official “liaisons” that Congress uses to get the attention of the various Departments of the federal government. When you formally ask for your Senator to contact the liaison to the Department of Labor, your Senator must comply…and the liaison to the Department of Labor must then respond to the Senator. There forms a paper trail on all of this, and these people are not allowed to just ignore you.
This is different from you merely calling your Senator and complaining, or leaving a voicemail or whatever. Don’t waste your time leaving a voicemail anywhere; they don’t listen to those. Trust me. They also ignore emails because they’ll pretend they never got them. But if you call and tell your Senator that you want their help complaining to the Congressional liaison to the Department of Labor then your Senator’s office should email you a Privacy Release Form that gives the office permission to speak to the Congressional liaison on your behalf.
I’ve already used this process twice now and was AMAZED at how fast a federal agency will get back to me when I complain through the Congressional liaison. In both instances, Senator Mark Kirk here in Illinois facilitated this for me (while Democrat Dick Durbin ignored me). Mark Kirk does an awesome job as Senator and I need to note that again here today. His staff really does whatever I need them to do, and they do it FAST.
So, I contacted them again today (I already had a Privacy Release Form) and filled out a complaint about the Labor Department trying to delay this report for political reasons.
I suggest you do the same.
Here is a fast way to find the contact info for your Senators: FIND YOUR SENATORS CONTACT INFO
Remember: only speaking to a live person and FAX-ing counts (forget about emails, they will not read them and will just delete them…and voicemails are deleted too without anyone listening to them). The staff has to record the calls that come in and they have to admit to receiving the faxes, but emails are a joke. Do not email people! If you can send a FAX about this, do so using FaxZero if you don’t have a fax machine. I use FaxZero every day and never have problems with it.
Go on record with a formal complaint to your Senators about the Department of Labor attempting to hide this jobs report until after the election!
Take a stand!
NOTE: Due to Hurricane Sandy, DC is shut down today and tomorrow. So call your Senators LOCAL office in your state. I’ve found I have the best luck with the Senators’ offices in the the state capital. For me in Illinois, that’s Springfield. The offices here in Chicago are usually staffed by very nasty people but the ones in the capital of Springfield are always nice. Always, always, always try your local office FIRST and only use DC as a last resort for anything because I’ve found the staffers in the DC offices are never very helpful anyway. Not sure why that is, but I think they are pretty full of themselves for getting to live in DC on taxpayers’ dimes…while the ones who work in the local office want to do a good job so they can be reassigned to DC. As for Chicago, anyone working for the government in any capacity here is just rude 24/7.
COPING MECHANISM: Left’s spreading fantasy about Obama winning Electoral College while losing Popular Vote
I’d love anyone with training in psychology to chime in below in comments on this, because it sure looks like we’re observing serious coping mechanisms being advanced to prep the lefties for Obama’s coming defeat.
Today, there are multiple stories being pushed by the NYT, The Hill, and other sites perpetuating the fantasy that Obama “will win the Electoral College” but lose the popular vote. That’s just not going to happen, because Obama is going to lose both the popular vote AND the electoral college…with Mitt Romney becoming the 45th President of the United States eight days from now.
I think this story about Obama “winning while losing” is the transition stage before these people accept that Obama will actually “lose while losing” and will no longer be president after this election. It feels like a doctor who doesn’t want to tell a patient he has terminal cancer in one blow, so he first tells the guy he’s a little sick but there are treatment options…and then when he’s accepted that, he’ll tell the patient that things look worse than first thought. In reality, there was never any hope…but the doctor didn’t want to be cruel or thought the patient couldn’t handle it. Hence, the coping mechanism and gradual revealing of reality.
Is that what this “electoral college/popular vote split” fantasy is about?
Because that’s not going to happen this year, folks. Romney will win the popular vote by about 10 million…and he will win the Electoral College by around 80-100 (or more). It’s not even going to be close.
But, I think if I had a Leftist in my life I cared about, someone who was an Obama cultist who I know will be be decimated when Obama loses, I think I’d start preparing that person mentally for the shock to come so that the person isn’t so devastated. It actually might be good to start a lefty off by saying, “Well, Romney is going to win the popular vote…but Obama is “The One” so he will still win the electoral college”. And then a few days later, maybe the story come closer to reality with the Leftist being told “Well, Romney is going to win the popular vote and the electoral vote, but maybe it will end up as a tie”. I don’t know how many lies like this the Left can tell itself, but perhaps the final consolation for them will be something like “Obama can run again in 2016 and he’ll beat Romney then!”.
That last one ignores completely the Democrat Civil War that’s going to rage openly beginning November 7th, when the factions of the Clinton Restoration and the Obama Remnant battle it out for control of the Democrat Party (SPOILER ALERT: the Clintons will win).
There is no future politically for the Obama acolytes after November 6th. The Obamas are already preparing to move to Hawaii, where the Barack Obama Center for Social Justice will be built alongside his presidential library and museum. Wealthy Chicago bankers have already purchased an estate for the Obamas near Honolulu and the Obama election night party is being held in fortress-like McCormick Place where his Concession Speech will be made. The election is lost for Democrats and they know it…and all that’s left to decide now is how big Romney’s win will be.
If you are a student of psychology at all, I’d love to hear your take on the Left’s coming to terms with Obama’s defeat. What other coping mechanisms are you seeing floated by the Ministry of Truth that is our national media?
How do YOU see Minitru attempting to cushion the blow of Obama’s coming defeat?
PLEASE take the warnings about Hurricane Sandy seriously if you are anywhere in its path.
One of the NWS meteorologists actually had to tell people “call me up on Friday and scream at me if I’m wrong” while urging them to take the warning about Hurricane Sandy seriously.
The reason he had to do this, clearly, is because for the last 30 years or so the local news in most of the country has sought higher ratings by freaking people out about the weather. Every drizzle was promoted as “Storm of the Century!” because the local news teams wanted to trick people into staying glued to their tee-vees to hear about the “monster downpour” or “abominable blizzard” on the way. And then 99% of the time there was nothing to be freaked out by at all…and so people stopped paying attention to warnings.
I admit I was like this, too, because I grew up in Cleveland where in the 80s channels WKYC and WJW competed aggressively to see who could scare people the most about the weather. When I moved to Chicago many years later, I had already become convinced that the tee-vee always lies and storm warnings were just bluster. Then, in the early winter of 2011, we had the “Snowmageddan Blizzard” (or “Snowpocalypse”) that dumped many feet of snow on Chicago all at once one random day. The tee-vee had said it was coming, but I just assumed they were lying again. So, Justin and I actually went out to dinner with our friends Michelle and Chris…and to this day I marvel at the miracle that we’re all still alive. It was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done…to go out in that storm…but I honestly never imagined that the tee-vee would be right about how bad it was going to be. All those years of weatherologists lying all the time completely desensitized me to how dangerous a bad storm can be.
So, please listen to the warnings for Hurricane Sandy. It’s a shame such a threatening storm shares its name with the woman who used to play Peter Pan and was the auntie on The Hogan Family (she was also my favorite guest on the Scooby Doo cartoon show I watched as a kid), because that makes the hurricane seems more cutesy-tunes than it should…but it’s too late to call this Hurricane Bruticus.
Governor Chris Christie recently had to come out and tell people in New Jersey to actually listen this time, as well. A lot of them felt that Hurricane Irene was no big deal, so they thought about ignoring Sandy too. And Christie told them all not to be stupid.
As a guy who ended up in the middle of a monster blizzard when he shouldn’t have been — just because I thought the tee-vee was exaggerating — please let me assure you that if you are anywhere near Sandy’s path you need to listen to Governor Christie and the NWS weather people this time.
The tee-vee is lying about other things today, for sure, but it’s right about the storm this time: be safe, get as far away from Sandy as possible, and do what Governor Christie says.
Jazz Shaw Pushes Fear Porn Over at HotAir.Com Today: THE ELECTION MIGHT NOT BE OVER NOVEMBER 6TH!
I really wish all of you who subscribe to TownHall Magazine would contact them and complain about what’s been going on over at HotAir.com lately; for those who don’t know, TownHall owns HotAir and pays the writers there VERY nice salaries to do what they do…which in the case of a few of them includes churning out fear porn. This is normally Allahpundit’s role at that site but today Jazz Shaw joined in, needlessly freaking people out with the article “This Thing May Not Be Over on 11/6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
This is madness. And it needs to stop.
First, I’ll tell you why it’s stupid to believe Jazz Shaw on this (starting with the fact that the guy’s name is “Jazz”) and then I’ll explain why I think HotAir and other sites plaster fear porn like this all over the place (hint: it’s to generate web traffic and make ad money…which leads to big bonuses for the fear porn peddlers).
The election will be decided on November 6th, 2012 and we will go to sleep very early that night knowing Mitt Romney is the 45th President of the United States. There is not going to be any recount and there will be no Florida-2000 level chaos. The reason I know this is because the Florida-2000 chaos permanently labeled Floridians as the people who decide our nation’s future through chaos and ineptitude. Floridians are still laughing stocks because of this and, most importantly, anyone associated with that Florida election mess is still seen as a buffoon in political circles. A lot of very nice people who were actually good at their jobs for many years are still mocked whenever they go to an event and are introduced as someone who worked elections in Florida in 2000; the jokes will never stop, because Florida’s incompetence and bumbling is seared into our collective minds over what happened in 2000. You cannot possibly believe that another state wants to take Florida’s place as the Incompetence Capital of the Nation. This will be Florida’s dishonor, alone, for many, many generations. I’m surprised there isn’t already a light opera or a Broadway show mocking the incompetence of Floridians in the year 2000.
A lot of strange things can happen in politics, but they only tend to happen once — and then they become pitfalls that everyone else avoids (wholly for fear of being mocked). Being involved in another Florida-like incident would be a career-ender for anyone who’d let that happen…so do not expect to see hemming and hawing ever again in a presidential race on election night regarding ballot counting. Voters want to know the outcome on Election Night and they will not tolerate another Florida nail biter. The consequences are too high for public officials who would bumble this, so it will not happen. If it did, then expect voters to boot out everyone responsible from the Governor to the Secretary of State and all other posts in between. People are not going to throw away their political careers by allowing a Florida-style election mess in Ohio. It is absurd to think otherwise.
I think this is especially true with a sitting black president in office and the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Henry Gates dolled up in their shiniest suits just waiting to race to a TV station and perform live commentary on how racism is the reason that the results are being delayed. You are either out of your mind or are recently awakened from a decades-long coma if you do not understand that the Justice Brothers will pounce on any chance afforded them on Election Night to claim that the election is being stolen from Barack Obama. If some incompetent election official in Ohio — as Jazz Shaw fear mongers at HotAir today — would delay vote tallies for that state then the Justice Brothers would accuse Republicans in Ohio of trying to manufacture a loss for Obama. The Ministry of Truth would then shift into intimidation mode and start revving up blacks to riot over Ohio’s “taking the presidency away from a black man”. Black people are too smart to fall into this trap and will not riot over Obama’s loss (as some fear porn peddlers constantly claim) but Minitru will indeed seize the chance to prompt them to do this. Minitru won’t be able to resist, because it would be too convenient a chance to excuse away all of Obama’s failings by way of racism. You’ve repeatedly seen Chris Matthews attempt to gin up racial violence in this election already…and you would be a fool to think he would not be chomping at the bit to turn a vote counting delay in Ohio into an opportunity to launch racial armageddon.
The stakes are too high for incompetence on Election Night and everyone knows it. If the people working in Boards of Election want to keep their very cushy jobs with their enormous salaries (six figures here in Illinois) then they will have an orderly and prompt counting of the votes on November 6th. This is, of course, what they are paid very well for and what they supposedly prepare all year to do. They actually are very good at their jobs, too, with the exception of the clowns down in Florida. Honestly, most election officials are just not as incompetent as even I sometimes believe. 99% of them get the job done correctly and efficiently with no trouble.
On top of all this, Ohio is not going to be close. Do not believe the fear porn over at HotAir. Romney is going to win the state by around 54% to 46%. I know this because Independents are breaking for Romney in droves…by double digits in Ohio. Democrats depend on running up large margins in Cuyahoga County to win the state of Ohio but there’s a very good chance that Romney might actually win the Greater Cleveland area (which seems remarkable, but if a Republican could ever win Cleveland it’s this year). If that happens, then Romney might end up winning as much as 56% of the vote in Ohio. It all depends on how much Cleveland’s suburbs outvote the inner city…and I think that’s going to be by a large amount. I was born and raised in Cleveland and assure you that my home state of Ohio sees no reason to give Obama another term; they gave him a chance and he failed and it’s a very Ohio thing to do to fire him. The mood on the ground in Ohio right now is actually very much like it was in 1992 when people decided it was time to fire George H.W. Bush because they didn’t think he did a good enough job to stay president. Ohioans don’t care if Obama is black, but they do have a problem with him being incompetent…so it’s time for Ohioans to boot him from the White House. Ohio is not a state that feels any obligation to vote Democrat for ideological reasons when the Democrat in office is not doing a good enough job or meeting their basic expectations for a President.
I really want you to pay attention to sites that are pushing any fear porn related to Ohio…and starting November 7th I hope you hold writers like Jazz Shaw accountable for what they are doing. These guys all know that Ohio is not going to be close but right now the Ministry of Truth is pushing the meme to lefties that “Ohio is too close to call!”. This is a psychological tool the Left is using in the last few days of the election to keep lefties from completely imploding emotionally. Claiming that Ohio is “too close to call” is the only strategy Democrats have left at this time. If they admitted that Obama has lost Ohio, then panic would race through the Left and the lefties wouldn’t bother showing up on Election Day. So, Minitru diddles with the polls and makes up all sorts of oddball stories claiming that Obama is ahead in Ohio early voting…and the only evidence they have to support that is reporters “hearing hundreds of people were in line to vote for Obama somewhere, my friend’s neighbor texted me but then I deleted the text accidentally so I don’t have proof but I am a reporter so you need to believe me”.
Nonsense.
This is all as believable as watching “Baghdad Bob”, Saddam Hussein’s Minister of Information, going on live television back in 2003 to announce that “it was close” and that Saddam’s army was holding onto the country and that the Americans didn’t have a chance because “early voting” on the battlefield indicated that Saddam Hussein’s regime would prevail. We all know how that worked out. And we can see that Baghdad Bob was lying up a storm, which is what Ministers of Information do for crumbling regimes. A similar position is filled in this country by Chris Matthews at MSNBC.
HotAir.com needs web traffic to survive, because web traffic translates into ad impressions…which TownHall needs to justify the continued salaries to guys like Jazz Shaw. Fear porn sells, folks. It’s why the local news teams are always going on about “The Monster Storm That Ate Cleveland!” or whatever, when about five inches of powder fell on Cuyahoga County. The local news has at least one story a day that’s so sensational and terror-inducing because TV stations need you to race around in panic, telling all your friends they have to watch…and it always ends up being nonsense. The media depends on you, as a viewer or reader, to forget how you were tricked into tuning into the fear porn because the endless stream of propaganda keeps you too distracted to even remember you went through this emotional terrorism yesterday for no reason. And you will subject yourself to it again tomorrow because you never learn that the news business is really the ad business and scaring you out of your mind is how these people make money.
HotAir has good people like Ed Morissey working there, and Ed doesn’t stoop to this stuff. He’s a friend of a friend of mine and I know he does not play these fear porn games because he cares about his credibility (and writes under his own, real name and uses his real picture on the site). Though I don’t agree with her all the time, I think Erika Johnson over there does a good job too, and she doesn’t engage in fear porn (once again, she writes under her real name). But I think Allahpundit’s role at that site is to write the fear porn pieces that HotAir seems to need to stay viable; the fear porn gets attention because the Leftist sites will link to HotAir when they publish fear porn…and many lefty eyeballs will come to the site because the likes of Daily Kos or whoever will say, “See! Even conservative writers believe Obama will win!”. This makes the site traffic go up…and with it the ad dollars that pay for keeping Allahpundit around. Speaking of which, don’t you think it’s odd that the person at HotAir who traffics in the most fear porn is the one using the mysterious pen name…the one who refuses to use his real name to sign any of this propaganda? I don’t think this is a coincidence.
To a much lesser extent, this is what “Jazz Shaw” does at HotAir too (if that’s his real name)…and I think he’s the one who published today’s fear porn because people have been making noise about Allahpundit’s agenda and motivations so they needed someone new to do this today. Ordinarily, this would have been an Allahpundit fear porn piece about Ohio not counting its votes properly on November 6th…but I think enough people see what Allahpundit is up to that they needed the fear porn to go out under someone else’s banner today.
I want to speak personally for a minute here, because I get very angry when I see conservative sites purposefully screwing with good people’s emotions like this. I think it’s sick, actually. Writers like Allahpundit and Jazz Shaw know that there are susceptible and naive people out there who are terrified of a second Obama Regime and so they deliberately write things that feed on that fear and swirl people into a panic. The hope is that this weapons-grade emotional terrorism will cause people to tweet, email, and Facebook the article and drive a fresh revenue stream into HotAir’s coffers by getting them a lot of traffic from panicked people who race towards the fear porn (like bystanders drawn to gape at a bloody traffic accident or crime scene). Allahpundit and Jazz Shaw sit back and laugh when they see the numbers coming in off the fear porn pieces…and someone at TownHall preps their bonus checks with gold-star-stickers for a “good job!”.
Meanwhile, nice moms and grandmas and dads who could be spending time with their kids are glued to computer screens in tears because they’re being falsely told that “Ohio might not report votes on November 6th!” or “Obama’s winning in early voting!” or whatever else HotAir is fear-porning that day. I am tired of seeing honest and decent people being emotionally terrorized by conservative writers like this just for the web traffic the fear porn brings.
I will go a step further and flat-out accuse Allahpundit of WANTING Obama to win a second term and of deliberately trying to demoralize Romney voters to give up and just let “the inevitable happen” because he’s been so aggressive with the fear porn for so long. I don’t think Jazz Shaw wants Obama to win and believe he’s just doing this for web traffic, however. Either way, TownHall should put the both of them on unpaid leave until after the election.
And readers of HotAir should remember everything these guys say and do between now and November 6th…so that on November 7th they can evaluate how they feel about being put through the emotional ringer by Allahpundit and Jazz Shaw for no good reason (other than HotAir’s profits).
I know that everyone needs to make a profit and web sites need traffic to survive…but purposefully scaring anxious people with one crazy fear porn assertion after another is not okay with me. It’s cruel, unprofessional, and quite frankly something I expect from the Ministry of Truth and the Left…but not from guys supposedly on our side.
It needs to stop immediately…and those engaging in this fear mongering need to suffer professional consequences starting November 7th.
Who else do you see peddling the fear porn like this?
I want to make sure they’re all on my radar so November 7th they all see some professional consequence for this fear mongering before the elation.
